ZTF SN Ia DR2 follow-up : Characterization of subluminous Type Ia supernovae in the ZTF DR2 full sample

Alburai, Alaa and Galbany, Lluís and Burgaz, Umut and Dimitriadis, Georgios and Johansson, Joel and Smith, Mat and Sanfeliu, Ramon and Guerra, Sandra and Müller-Bravo, Tomás and Goobar, Ariel and Dhawan, Suhail and Kim, Young-Lo and Nordin, Jakob and Townsend, Alice and Sollerman, Jesper and Ginolin, Madeleine and Rigault, Mickael and Terwel, Jacco H. and Smith, Roger and Wold, Avery and Chen, Tracy X. and Jegou du Laz, Theophile (2026) ZTF SN Ia DR2 follow-up : Characterization of subluminous Type Ia supernovae in the ZTF DR2 full sample. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 707: A91. ISSN 0004-6361

Abstract

The Zwicky Transient Facility Data Release 2 (ZTF DR2) includes a total of 3628 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), providing the largest and most complete sample of spectroscopically confirmed SNe Ia at low redshift to date. In this paper, we present a photometric and spectroscopic analysis of 124 subluminous SNe Ia, the largest sample of spectroscopically classified subluminous Type Ia supernova observed with a single instrument, comprising 87 91bg-like, 12 86G-like, 18 04gs-like, and 7 02es-like events. We complement the published DR2 SALT2 light-curve parameters with new parameters obtained using template-based fits from SN OO P Y . We measured the expansion velocities and pseudo-equivalent widths ( pEW ) of key spectral features using SPEXTRACTOR . Next, the spectral averages were constructed for each subluminous subtype, binned by phase. We also analyzed the host galaxy environments, both global and local, in terms of g − z color, stellar mass, and directional light radius ( d DLR ). We found that all subluminous SNe Ia (except the 02es-like subtype) are intrinsically red. This is made evident when we separate the extrinsic color components from intrinsic ones. Since SALT2 has not been trained on subluminous SNe Ia, it compensates for their redder colors by inflating the c parameter, thereby extending the luminosity-width relation to negative values of x 1. As expected, all subluminous SNe Ia fall within the cool region of the Branch et al. (2006, PASP, 118, 560) diagram, with the exception of 02es-like events, which display lower Si II λ 5972 pEW values. All subluminous subtypes tend to occur in more massive, redder host galaxies and in the reddest local environments within their stellar mass bins. Notably, 91bg- and 86G-like SNe Ia explode at significantly larger normalized galactocentric distances. Finally, we identified the pEW of the blended Ti II +Si II +Mg II absorption feature at 4300 Å, along with s BV , as robust and sufficient indicators for subclassifying subluminous SNe Ia.